Collaborate Disseminate
More than 40 years after launch, Voyager 1 is still making new discoveries. The latest achievement by the craft is the detection of a faint, plasma “hum,” indicating that there may be more activity in interstellar gas than previously thought.Continue R… Continue reading Voyager 1 detects plasma “hum” in interstellar space
NASA’s New Horizons currently has a lot of time on its hands as it coasts through vast emptiness towards interstellar space. The probe has just passed a new milestone distance on the journey, and celebrated by taking a snap of its predecessor Voyager 1… Continue reading New Horizons snaps photo of Voyager 1 from 11 billion miles away
NASA is always keen to highlight the space agency’s many successes, and rightly so — those who pay for these expensive projects have a right to know what they’re getting for their money. And so the news was recently sprinkled with stories of the discovery of electron bursts beyond the …read more
Continue reading Still Working after All These Years: The Voyager Plasma Wave Subsystem
Despite the challenges posed worldwide by the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 has been a bumper year when it comes to space exploration, marked by some incredible firsts and some sad farewells. It was a year of remarkable emerging technologies, a line up of am… Continue reading A new frontier: The year in space, 2020
NASA is back in contact with Voyager 2 after almost eight months of silence. Radio communication has not been possible because the Deep Space Station 43 (DSS43) in Australia is undergoing an upgrade, but on October 29 it sent a signal to Voyager 2, whi… Continue reading NASA sends first commands to Voyager 2 in eight months
When it comes to antenna projects, we usually cover little ones here. From copper traces on a circuit board to hand-made units for ham radio. But every once in a while it’s fun to look at the opposite end of the spectrum, and anyone who craves such change of pace …read more
Continue reading NASA Making Big Upgrades To Their Big Dish DSS43
Nary a month since NASA managed to reboot Voyager 2 after a technical malfunction, it looks like we’re about to lose contact for almost a whole year. The radio antenna that acts as Earth’s sole transmitter to Voyager 2 will soon undergo important upgra… Continue reading NASA is about to stop talking to Voyager 2 for almost a year
NASA engineers are conducting an extremely long-range reconfiguring of the space agency’s two 42-year-old Voyager deep-space probes to extend their service lives. By cutting back and reallocating heating resources and bringing back online thr… Continue reading NASA reallocates resources to extend life of Voyager deep-space probes
The popular press was recently abuzz with sad news from the planet Mars: Opportunity, the little rover that could, could do no more. It took an astonishing 15 years for it to give up the ghost, and it took a planet-wide dust storm that blotted out the sun and …read more
Continue reading Engineering for the Long Haul, the NASA Way
On the face of it, powering most spacecraft would appear to be a straightforward engineering problem. After all, with no clouds to obscure the sun, adorning a satellite with enough solar panels to supply its electrical needs seems like a no-brainer. Finding a way to support photovoltaic (PV) arrays of the proper size and making sure they’re properly oriented to maximize the amount of power harvested can be tricky, but having essentially unlimited energy streaming out from the sun greatly simplifies the overall problem.
Unfortunately, this really only holds for spacecraft operating relatively close to the sun. The tyranny of …read more
Continue reading The Deep Space Energy Crisis Could Soon Be Over